


Chasing Nightmares

by TheMuffinBee



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Jester is bad at dealing with negative emotions, Magic, Missing Scene, Nightmares, Widojest Week, doodling, so is caleb, they finally talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25207351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMuffinBee/pseuds/TheMuffinBee
Summary: The Mighty Nein's first meeting with the Bright Queen has triggered some unpleasant memories for Jester, and now she can't sleep. Fortunately for her, it seems Caleb can't sleep either.A missing scene from Episode 58, "Wood and Steel."
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 11
Kudos: 139





	Chasing Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> This one has been a *long* time coming. It's actually what I was working on before last year's Widojest Week, but I could never find a good way to finish it, even though it was 90% completed. Technically, it was supposed to be posted yesterday for the "Magic" prompt, but things got busy. Hope you guys like it!

Jester awoke with a gasp, a scream swallowed in her throat as she gulped in a lungful of air. Cruel laughter bounced between her ears and a searing pain lingered across her face and in her gut. There was an ache in her joints where her arms and legs and fingers had been stretched and stretched and stretched—

_Shit. Not again._

She thought she had been done with this, she hadn’t had a dream for months. The past two days though...

Clumsy hands fumbling in the darkness, Jester reached out for Nugget. She would be fine after a few slobbery puppy kisses and warm cuddles, those were the _best_ remedy for bad dreams. But as she patted around on the ground next to her, her fingers only connected with hard-packed dirt. A small groan escaped her throat. 

_Oh, yeah...he’s with Yeza, back at the inn…Sprinkle too…_

Wrapping her arms around herself, she flopped onto her other side, away from the darkened woods and towards her friends. 

_Calm the fuck down, you’re not alone, everyone’s here with you now._

Forcing herself to take slow breaths, she took in the shape of Beau next to her, sleeping back to back with Yasha. Then there was Fjord, sprawled half-on and half-off of his bedroll, followed by Caduceus looking somehow even more serene in sleep than when he was awake. She could just barely see Nott curled up on the ground in the hollow behind the firbolg’s knees right next to Caleb...who was staring straight at her, tired-eyed and confused.

A panicked embarrassment welled up from inside her and she flipped back around to face the treeline.

Oh Traveler, she hoped he hadn’t heard her earlier gasp and whimper, hadn’t seen the way she had surely been tossing in her sleep. They had been riding their moorbounders all day, why wasn't he dead asleep from exhaustion? Then again, why wasn't she? 

Ugh, this was so stupid! She was the trickster cleric, the one that was supposed to take care of everyone else and make sure they were okay, that they were happy. Nightmares? Pfffft, no. She wasn't supposed to have _nightmares_ , especially not of something that happened practically _forever_ ago.

But the longer she stared out into the darkness of the eternally autumnal forest, the more the trees looked like iron bars. The breeze rattling the branches up above began to sound like the clanking of chains, the steady breathing of Beau behind her changed into a ragged, heavy wheeze and stifled moans. Her arms and legs felt tight, strapped together…

Nope.

Nope nope nope nope nope.

She turned back around to the group before her bones decided to stick together and not move. Was Caleb still staring at her? She took a quick peek from behind her bangs.

Relief flooded through her. He had turned away towards the other side of the Hut, maybe he hadn’t noticed anything after all.

Jester settled herself into her bedroll, lifting the hem of her cloak to her nose and breathing in the faint scent of her Mama’s perfume. Yes, that should help. She had gotten into the habit of putting a light dab of the oil on every morning to keep from getting homesick, and it had now soaked into the fabric after all of these months on the road. Maybe it would help ward off the nigh…the not-so-great dreams she had been having. 

Curling up on her bedroll, she watched her friends twitch and snore in their sleep, waiting to nod off herself and dream of something normal, like battle-dancing unicorns covered in glitter.

Sleep, however, had different plans.

Jester just couldn't get comfortable, flopping onto her stomach, back onto her side, tapping her fingers and tail, wiggling her toes. Her eyes refused to stay shut, drifting open mere seconds after she closed them. 

Well, fuck. She was awake, and there was nothing she could do about it.

With a sigh, she sat up and reached into her haversack, pulling out her sketchbook and pencils. She might as well do something productive until she got tired again.

As she padded over to the other side of the dome, Jester began thinking up ideas to sketch. Maybe Beau drawing dicks in that professor lady’s book? That would be cool, but she didn’t know what the professor looked like. Or maybe she should draw that cute drow that had shown them around the city? In Jester's opinion, there should be more romance novels about the Kryn, they were all _so_ pretty. Then inspiration hit her: she missed her pets, so _obviously_ she should make a drawing of Nugget, Sprinkle, and Yarball in a giant cuddle pile! Perfect!

But once she set her pencil to the paper, she only managed a couple of lumpy circles, a squiggle or two, and nothing else. She couldn’t even bring herself to draw a flock of flying dicks, which was always a good backup when she got art-stuck, but it just wasn’t working tonight. Instead, she tapped her pencil against the page, over and over again.

“Hey, uh, can’t sleep?” a voice said next to her.

“Whatthefuck?!” she hissed and lurched away, swinging a protective fist in front of herself.

“Whoa!” She felt a hand close over her arm and tug it down gently. “Calm down, Jester. It’s just me.”

Heart beating in her ears, Jester blinked, then squinted. “Caleb?”

“Ja, just Caleb. Please don’t punch me.” He was kneeling beside her, one hand out, ready to fend off another attack. Then he raised his eyebrows. “Or at least wait until I can cast _Mage Armor_.”

Jester felt her stomach drop down to her toes, “Oh shit, Caleb. I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to…”

“I know, it’s okay.” He let go of her arm and sat on the ground. “I, uh, couldn’t sleep either. I thought maybe you’d like me to conjure up some _Dancing Lights_ , so you could see what you are drawing, but you seem a bit...jumpy.”

“Jumpy? Me?" she laughed, waving away the notion with a dismissive flick of her wrist, "No, of course not. Just a little startled, that’s all. You know, sometimes you are very silly, Caleb.” The words rolled off her tongue in a single breath. 

He appraised her with a squint of his eyes. “Isn’t being startled the same as being jumpy?”

“No, jumpy is, like, a long-term state. Being startled happens,” she snapped her fingers, “like that. It’s a quicker sort of thing.”

“Um, perhaps the two are—” he began.

“Any-way!” she singsonged over him, “That was very nice of you to offer your _Lights_ , but I don’t need them. Darkvision, remember?" She pointed to her eyes."I can see juuuust fine.” 

_Please go back to bed. Nothing to see here._

“Ja, I know.” He rubbed the back of his head. “I just, uh, thought they might be helpful.” 

Jester felt a small twinge of guilt when he broke off his gaze to stare at the ground.

“I mean,” she backtracked, “Maybe they would have helped, probably would have. But I’m...I’m having just the _teensiest_ bit of trouble thinking of what to draw, I don’t think that more light will help too much with that.”

“Oh.” He glanced over at her sketchbook. “Artist’s block?”

“Yeah...just a little." She felt an odd urge to cover up the mostly blank page with her hand, or perhaps shut the book entirely. It was kind of embarrassing, him seeing her sudden lack of creativity.

“That’s too bad, you have quite the talent.” He gave her a sidelong look, then glanced away. “I, ah, rather enjoy watching you work.”

_Really now?_

Jester stifled a gleeful smile at his words, knowing an opportunity when she saw one. Or heard, rather. 

This would make her feel better _for sure_.

“Oh?” Within the span of a breath, she leaned in close to him. Not too much, just enough to make his eyes go wide and get a blush going along his cheeks.

“You like to watch, Caleb?" she whispered in a throaty voice her Mama sometimes used on clients. Looking up at him through her eyelashes, she lifted a scandalized hand to smirking lips. "I didn't know you were into that.”

Yes! There he went, flushing that perfect shade of crimson. Jester pushed in just a hair more, refusing to let up the pressure.

“I...I uh...” He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down in a very satisfying way. It occurred to Jester that she couldn’t see it before he shaved. “It sounds a bit creepy when you say it like that. I meant—”

“I know what you meant,” she giggled and leaned back, relenting with a lascivious grin.

Oh, he was just too easy! How did he ever manage to fall in with a group of such Very Bad People with a blush like that?

She bowed forward with a little flourish of her hand. “And thank you a’very much for the compliment.”

Caleb nodded, looking relieved to no longer have her in his personal space, though she still caught one of those little almost-smiles on his lips. He looked back over to where the rest of the Nein slept. “Well, if you do not require any assistance, I should probably try to get some sleep. Goodnight, Jester.”

Her smile faded as she watched him push off the ground, a nagging sensation pulling at the back of her brain. It would be so much easier to just tease him, stay up until she crashed, and hope to the Traveler that she wouldn’t have to deal with another fucking dream tomorrow night.

It would be easier, yeah, but it wouldn’t solve anything.

Balls. This was going to suck.

“Hey, uh, Caleb?” she whispered and tugged on the bottom of his coat.

He looked down at her. “Ja?”

“Can you sit back down for a minute or, like, five?”

“Ah, sure. What is up?” He again settled down next to her. Much to Jester's amusement, and maybe a tiny bit of disappointment, he seemed to put a little more distance between the two of them than he had before.

_Always so cautious._

It was too bad. Here he was, giving her a prime chance to tease him, indulge in a bit of playful banter, maybe make him open up just a little bit more to her, but no. Instead, it was time for her to be serious. 

She _hated_ being serious. 

Now Jester did close her sketchbook and set it to the side, taking a moment to smooth out her skirts. She felt so stupid, so silly about this. So...weak.

“I guess it’s a good thing that you’re up right now.” Her anxious fingers began to fidget with her tail under her knee, out of sight where he couldn’t see it. “I've been wanting to talk to you anyway.”

“Is everything all right?” he asked, a worried frown creasing across his face.

“Ummm…no...not really…”

_Oh, just spit it out! You’ve already done this once, it'll be easier the second time around._

“Jester.” He paused, frown deepening. “Earlier, did you have a ni—”

“I wanted to apologize!” she blurted out before he could finish his question, then pressed a surprised hand to her mouth. That had been way too loud. Watching the rest of the party to make sure she hadn’t woken anyone, Jester tried again in a lower voice, "I wanted to apologize to you."

Caleb looked at her like she had grown a third eye and her horns had turned to snakes. “Apologize? Whatever for?”

"Well, you see…" She cleared her throat for no real reason, certainly not because her voice sounded an octave too high or anything. "I'm kinda sorta sorry about what happened a couple of days ago.”

Caleb rubbed his chin, looking down in surprise for a second when his fingers met skin instead of his former beard, then looked back up at her. "You, ah, you are going to have to be a bit more specific about that. A lot happened a couple of days ago."

"Um…it's about the slave thing." Jester noticed that her fingers had now taken to fiddling with the straps on her boots and pulled them back. "I'm sorry about the slave thing. I already talked to Beau after she mentioned how much she hated it, but I feel like I need to say sorry to you too. So, I'm sorry. It was a stupid idea from the beginning." 

"Jester, there were a lot of stupid ideas that day."

"I know, but…" This had been so much easier with Beau: listen to her feelings, apologize, hug it out, then hide drawings of friendship dicks in random places throughout their room. Boom. Done. 

With Caleb, though, everything always became more…complicated.

“Look, think of it like this,” he said, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, "We may have never made it to the Bright Queen had we walked in with two humans from the Empire on equal footing with the rest of the group, especially when one of them has a distinct Zemnian accent. It would have been suspicious, to be sure. We're not rotting in prison and Yeza is free, that is all that matters."

Jester shook her head. "No, it’s not just for the slave idea in general...it's for how we treated you guys, we took it too far. We had...fun...with it. If there’s anybody that shouldn’t have done that, it’s me and Fjord. I mean, we know what that feels like, what it’s like to be chained up and not able to move or talk or—” her voice cut out, lips clamping down around her teeth before she could say more. 

Caleb’s eyes had a pronounced focus to them as he processed her words, probably archiving every detail of the conversation away somewhere in that scary-sharp mind of his. He wasn’t looking at her with pity, or anger, or exasperation, but with a quiet intensity that made her muscles tighten against her bones. The term "calculated risk" rose to the surface of her thoughts—said in his voice, of course. It was like he was weighing her as a consequence, trying to choose a tactic. 

Finally, he looked away and said, "You know, you never told us what happened in Shady Creek Run."

It wasn't a question, he would never ask her outright, none of them would. At least, not for a long time. But it _was_ an invitation to talk. The real question was, did she want to accept it? 

She had no idea.

"Well, I didn't think I needed to say much about it.” She shrugged as though it didn’t matter to her one way or the other. “I mean, you saw what that asshole had down there to… to _play_ with, you saw what he was like." 

Caleb didn't respond. Was he giving her room to talk, or was he just uncomfortable with his own topic of conversation? Either way, his silence was making _her_ uncomfortable, making her want to fill the heavy void in their conversation. 

Brushing a bit of dirt off of her dress, she said, "He worked over Yasha the most, you know. She wouldn't make any noise, and she's huge, so I think he saw her as a challenge. Fjord and I got off pretty okay compared to her." 

Again, he was silent. Just as she was about to open her mouth, Caleb spoke, voice quiet and a blank tiredness hanging in his eyes, "Torture is still torture, Jester. Being forced to hear it happen to someone else and being powerless to help is a form all on its own." He chuckled without mirth, his face looking as though the laughter tasted bitter. "Remember, I'm a bit of an expert on the subject."

"Yeah, but…" Jester twisted one of the rings on her fingers and could feel her tail curling underneath her. Oh, this was so stupid. Everything was said and done already, there was no use getting upset over it now. She brightened her tone and buried her shaking fingers in her skirt. "It didn't matter anyway, I just sang whenever I was awake, I could barely hear a thing."

He nodded slowly and gave her one of _those_ looks, a contradictory mingling of sadness, sincerity, and skepticism all rolled into a single glance. "I'm glad singing through the gag in your mouth proved to be so effective." 

Dammit. How did he always seem to cut through her bullshit? He was even worse than Beau when it came to sussing out the things about herself she would rather forget. 

She exhaled, pushing her growing frustrations out with her breath and into the ether, just like the Traveler had taught her to do when she was a little girl stuck in a room too small for her imagination. Feeling anxious and agitated would do nothing to help her sleep tonight. Right now, she needed to wrap up this conversation, make him accept her apology, and move on. If only he would stop trying to explain away her actions with stupid things like _logic_ and _reason_ . She didn't want to _think_ better about the situation, she wanted to _feel_ better about it!

Her lips lifted into a practiced smile, the one that was just wide enough but still kept her fangs covered, and said, "Well, that's all besides the point anyway. Look, I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry, okay?"

"Jester, it’s all right—”

"No, it’s not!" She shook her head, earrings jangling with the motion, her smile gone almost as soon as she had it in place. How could she make him understand? "You guys risked your lives to rescue us from becoming _actual_ slaves, Molly _lost_ his life, and here we turn around and try to turn you two into slaves for a day, and now I feel all icky and _gross_ inside when I think about it, and it wasn’t 'all right.' Stop telling me that it was and just accept my apology! Okay?”

Breathing heavy, she stared straight into his eyes. He was looking at her like a spell he couldn't figure out, head cocked to the side and brow furrowed.

"Please, Caleb?" 

Lips set into a thin line, he looked away, gaze darting back and forth as if he were searching for an answer to appear on the darkened horizon. After what should have been only seconds, but felt more like minutes, he spoke, "Okay, Jester. But only if you accept mine." 

She blinked. "What?”

"I’m sorry too, about what happened a few days ago.”

"Which part? The thing with the dodecahedron and the Bright Queen?" 

He stared at her aghast, "For trying to turn you into tiefling flambé?" 

"Oh."

Gods, he was right. That had been less than a day before they met the Bright Queen. Wow, it felt more like weeks. 

At least, it had until just now. 

Jester swallowed, definitely _not_ thinking of her skin melting off of her muscles, how even the simple act of standing still was pure agony, how her holy symbol had seared into the flesh of her palm, how Caleb's placid eyes had frozen into chips of ice, wild and sharp. 

Nope, she wasn't thinking of any of those things at all. 

Glancing up, she found him staring at her, eyes now as clear as a summer sky. He was waiting for her response, but she had none to give—she didn’t know how. Instead, she tore her gaze away from his, choosing to focus on Caduceus’s shock of pink hair on the other side of the bubble.

He sighed, a quiet but heavy sound. “I’m sorry, that...I...it...damn.” He dropped his head into his hands, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Gods, that must have hurt. Jester, I am so, so sorry.”

It _had_ hurt. His attack had been worse than anything the Iron Shepherds or Lorenzo had done to her. Not just physically, though she would take a regular old beating any day over a _Fireball_ to the face, but the way it felt like someone had stolen her ax and cleaved it right into her chest, or perhaps like they had asked to look at her holy symbol and then snapped it in half. It felt like..like...

Betrayal. That was it, betrayal. 

They had gotten so close in the last couple of weeks, what with him telling the group about who he really was, removing his bandages so they could see his scars, the delight she had felt when he disguised himself as her twin. She had _just_ told him he had a big heart, received his promising ghost of a smile in exchange for her compliment...then all hell broke loose in a single concussive blast and a torrent of flame.

_Stop it. You're so over this, it doesn't matter._

A joke, she needed a joke. Something to break the tension, something to get them back on even ground. But a flurry of feelings ran through her faster than she ever thought possible, drowning all of her thoughts like a tidal wave. Her heart felt the sharp edge of betrayal, yes, but also rage, sadness, confusion, and _fear._ Seeing Caleb wreathed in fire, staring down his friends with almost a look of pride on his face, Jester had thought he might as well be one of the demons himself, he already looked the part. Just what...how…

“How could you have done that to us, Caleb?” The question was out of her mouth before she realized her lips were moving.

Okay, maybe she wasn't over it.

A moment of stunned silence passed between them. His head was raised now, a stricken expression frozen on his features. “I...I told you, I was — they made me frightened..of...you.”

“But don’t you trust us?” Oh no, why was she digging in deeper? She knew he wanted forgiveness for what he had done, and she wanted to give it to him, she really did, but the words kept spilling out one after the other. She couldn’t stop. “Do you not..trust us? I mean, how could those demons make you afraid of us if you trust everyone? I can understand Yasha being controlled for so long, she hasn’t been with us the whole time and she’s...she’s had so much to deal with after losing Molly.

“And I,” her voice caught the inside of her throat, scratchy and rough, “I managed to shake off that incubus just fine, so did Beau and Fjord, but you...I thought we had become...friends. Like, _really good_ friends.”

“Jester, please understand I—” He again cast his gaze downward, his hands beginning to pick and scratch at the scars on his arms. "I have never wanted to hurt anyone in the group, not once." 

"But you almost killed me anyway." 

_Shit._

Jester flinched at the accusation in her own voice. All this hurt, all this pain had come out of nowhere. She didn't need to put him through the wringer like this, there was no doubt he had already said and thought all these things to himself over and over again. 

Jester could hear the thick swallow in his throat even louder than his whisper, "Ja, I did. I almost...burned you to death." 

Well, there wasn't much more she could say after that, was there? She had already shown too much of her hand. Caleb made it so easy to let out those things she would never want others to hear, to let her smile dip a little, to be sad. To be…weak. He didn't judge her for it. Instead, he listened and offered what quiet advice or help he could. It was safe to be _Jester_ around him and not simply _a_ jester, at least for a few minutes. But she had fallen back into that pattern far too easily, let her words slip too far, and now… 

Now it was time to close her lips like a vice and not speak until she had control of herself again. 

A silence fell over the two of them, so thick it was almost suffocating. He didn't make a sound, but slowly raised his head to stare somewhere far off, somewhere no longer here and now. Finally, he said, “You know, even the memory of it...even the memory is warped.”

Curiosity got the better of her, as it always did, and she allowed herself a single word, “How?”

He still wouldn't look at her. “It’s like, ah, like there are two memories layered on top of each other." His fingers twitched, and she knew he wanted to diagram his explanation out with his hands, like weaving a spell. "There’s one, the one _they_ wanted me to see, where you’re all so angry. Murderous, even. Each face, Beau, Fjord, Caduceus...you. Everyone looked so twisted, malevolent. It was terrifying.”

Just a few more words. “And the other?”

He winced and closed his eyes. “In the other, you guys are the ones that are terrified. Clearly, completely terrified. And you…you look worse every time I see you through the flames. Just…blistered and covered in burns. I hit you harder than anybody else that day. Just one more attack and you would have...I would have…”

Caleb had never been very good at hiding that thousand-yard stare of his, but now it’s even more noticeable after shaving off his beard. It struck her just how much he resembled his old self at that moment. Head bent downward, hand scratching furiously at his arm, an emptiness settled deep into his eyes, he looked…broken.

Oh god, she broke Caleb.

 _Get yourself together, Jester. You're supposed to make people happy, not… whatever the fuck this is._

Again, Jester let out a long breath through her nose, trying to exhale every poisonous thought and feeling with it. It seemed to take this time, a heaviness lifting from her chest. She breathed in and out one more time, just for good measure, and said, "But you didn't kill anyone, nobody burned to death." 

He blanched and she flinched. Fuck. She had forgotten what she had overheard him say to Beau just yesterday, _"Yes, I murdered those most dear to me, yes…"_

Truth be told, she had tried to forget he said that. It seemed to be the one thing her normally overwhelming curiosity refused to touch. But she couldn’t help but wonder, who was it he had considered ‘most dear’ to him? Friends? Family? Maybe even...Astrid? Jester shook herself from the dark little corner her mind had wandered into, thinking about _that_ wasn't going to do either of them any good tonight.

Relaxing her shoulders and lifting the corners of her mouth into that practiced smile, she tried to patch over her misstep. "You woke up from the trance-thing and we made it out of the well okay. We…we're okay." 

He nodded, still looking miserable. Actually, he somehow looked worse.

She needed to get things back to normal. Otherwise, neither of them were going to get any sleep. Forcing cheerfulness wasn't going to work, she could tell already. 

Time for a different tactic. 

She flipped her hair out of her face with a quick, nonchalant motion. "Of course, you did kill Nugget for a while there. I know you don't like dogs, Caleb, but geez, did you have to go that far?" 

Well that was kinda a joke, right? At least a step in the right direction, maybe, if his reaction was any indication. Instead of gazing at the ground like he wished it would swallow him whole, Caleb now stared at her with wide-eyed astonishment, jaw hanging open and everything.

Well, most people didn't joke about their dogs getting fried to a crisp, did they? But with the number of times he had put Frumpkin in situations where he got his own cat ‘killed,’ he shouldn't be _that_ shocked.

"But hey, guess what?" she locked eyes with him, leaning forward with raised eyebrows until he responded. 

"Wh-what?" 

"I am alive." He looked away again, but she continued, "Nugget is alive, you are alive, and we are all still friends."

She reached over to still his restless hand, it was a light touch, like petting a scared animal, but still enough to feel that startling heat coming off his skin. "You know, Caleb...I probably already forgave you back during the fight, even before I knew what happened." 

"Is that why you kept healing me?" He looked back towards her, and he finally looked like he was fully there, fully present. "You wasted so many spells on me, and I was just so…useless."

"Well, that, and I didn't want you to die! You went down, like, what? Four times? Five?" Okay, this was good. It was at least something close to positive. "I mean, you guys are practically my family...of course I would try to save you!" 

His shoulders began to relax and she saw a warmth returning to his eyes. "Even if I don't like dogs?" 

"Even if you don't like dogs!" She smiled at his attempt at humor, then pointed her finger at him. "Come on, you're friends with Nugget too, don't try to deny it. You let him lick your face for, like, hours that one time back in Nicodranus."

There was a softness in his expression that Jester didn’t quite understand as he said, "Yeah, I suppose I did."

"See? You're totally friends!" There, they were pretty much back to normal. Just one thing left to do. Jester held her hand out in front of him. "So, we’re good?" 

He gave a considering glance at her gesture, then raised his eyes to hers. "You know, you didn't even need to apologize in the first place."

"Caaay-leeeb!" she whined, pouting her lips, "Please?" 

"Ja, okay, okay." He raised his hand from his lap, but stopped before reaching for her, "I forgive you. You forgive me?" 

"Like I said, I already have."

"Jeeest-eeer," he mimicked her earlier whine, quieter and less plaintive than she had been, and that little almost-smile was back on his lips, "Please?" 

She grinned at him. "Yes, I forgive you." 

"Then we are even." His hand reached for hers, wrapping her fingers in a warmth like a campfire's glow. 

"Thanks, Caleb." 

He nodded. "And you as well." 

Their eyes met, their palms pressed against one another, and for just a second, maybe not even half of a second, Jester felt as though she were standing at the edge of a cliff, like she was just about to go tumbling headlong into the unknown.

_Weird. That doesn't make any sense._

"Well, we should probably get back to bed." She let go of his hand to stretch her arms out with a small groan.

"Probably," he agreed, then studied her for a second, "Are you tired at all?" 

Jester grimaced. No, she wasn't. That conversation had been way too stressful for her to feel tired. Rather, she felt frazzled and frayed, like a rope coming loose at the ends. 

"Well, if it's alright with you, I, uh, I would like to try something that may help. Could I see your sketchbook?" 

"Um…" Why would he want to see her sketchbook? It wasn't like she was still feeling embarrassed about her lack of inspiration and aimless squiggles from earlier (no, of course not), but he had never asked to see it before now. Then again, with the number of doodle-dicks she had hidden in his spellbook, she supposed it was only fair. She passed the book to him. "Okay, sure." 

"And a pencil?" 

_Oh?_

“Sure!” she said as she handed over her pencil, all of her self consciousness now cast from her mind. Caleb was up to something, and someone being up to something was _always_ more interesting than being embarrassed (which she totally wasn’t anyway).

He opened the book to a blank page at the back, completely bypassing her scribbled mess. "Is it okay if I…?" 

“Yeah yeah! Go ahead!”

Did Caleb know how to draw? Was he a secret artist all this time and he didn’t tell her? Ooooh! What if he was really good? Maybe he could teach her some new things! Then again, maybe he was really bad and she would have to pretend to like his stuff and lie to him about it. She was a _really_ good liar, like, one of the _best,_ but she didn’t want to lie to her friend. But then, maybe she could teach him how to draw, and that could be cool too!

Jester scooted up beside him, closing that gap he had so carefully placed between the two of them earlier. He didn’t seem to care or notice.

“Oh, um, hold on a second.” He reached for one of his many component pouches and pulled out his small chunk of dark red…phosphorus? Was that what he called it? “I’m afraid I can’t see as well in the dark as you can.”

Holding it up to his lips, he muttered a few arcane words. A spark caught on the craggy surface, ballooning into a dim, little orb that set itself to hovering above the page. His lips relaxed into a small but genuine smile, and a different kind of light shone in his eyes as he watched the spell take form. It was the sort of face Yasha made when she spotted a field of wildflowers, or the one that Caduceus made when he breathed in the steam of his tea, and Jester was sure it was the face she made when she could see a painting coming together in the _exact_ way she wanted.

It was a face of pure joy.

Funny, or perhaps ‘sad’ was the better word, that the thing Caleb loved so much had brought him so much pain. Yes, ’sad’ was definitely the better word to use there.

He placed a thin rag over the globe of light to dim it, and just like that, the smile disappeared as he looked down at the page before him. Caleb was back to being his normal, serious self.

“Now, uh...” He picked up her pencil in between his spindly fingers and drew a nearly perfect circle with a sure, practiced motion. Then he shifted her sketchbook over so that it was perched like a little bridge between their knees and offered the pencil back to her. “Your turn.”

She took hold of it and glanced at the book, back to the pencil, to the book again, and then up to Caleb. “My turn to...what? Draw a circle?”

He shrugged. “If you like. Or you could draw a line, a curve, a spiral...anything you can do in one stroke, but try to stay inside the circle.”

Was this some kind of game?

Looking back at the paper, she tried to envision what she wanted to put where.

“Oh, and don’t think about it.” He tapped the page with his finger. “Just draw something, it doesn’t matter what.”

“Um...okay.” Not sure if she was doing it right, she made a large swooping mark in the upper right, then held the pencil up to him. “Your turn?”

He nodded as he took the graphite stick from her. Without a pause, he made a thick diagonal line in the bottom left of the circle and offered her the pencil.

Following his lead, she took it and made a quick little curve coming off of her swoop, then passed it back. “So, what are we doing exactly?”

“We…” he drew a tiny, perfect little circle at the end of his line, “are making a sigil.”

Her head snapped towards him. “We are? Is this how your magic works? What kind of spell are we making?”

He chuckled, just a few puffs of air through his nose with no voice, but she could tell he was chuckling all the same.

“It’s, ah, it’s not that kind of sigil.” He handed her pencil back to her. “When I first began learning magic, at the very beginning, before…anyway, this is how one of my first teachers had us practice sigils.”

“Oh.” That didn’t really explain anything, but okay.

“You probably already know this from all of your experience with drawing,” he continued, “But she taught us that if you think too hard about making the perfect line or circle or what have you, then you tense up and things don’t come out quite right.”

She nodded as she drew a spiral. “So this was supposed to make it more, like, natural?”

“Exactly like that.” Caleb took the pencil and made another thick, straight line before passing it back to her. “There are too many arcane combinations to memorize them one by one. Instead, you take the basic shapes you’ve already practiced and put them all together whichever way you wish, over and over again, until you could do it perfectly, even with your eyes closed. Then they teach you the real stuff.”

“That sounds, uh…” Boring. It sounded very, very boring. Just rearranging perfect shapes without thinking about where you put them? With no picture in mind? That was an _entire_ class? Teenage Jester would have either died from lethal amounts of boredom or been kicked out before the end of the first week. Possibly both. Probably both. Current Jester doodled a lopsided oval kinda, sorta, _most definitely_ on purpose. “So, uh, why are we doing it now?”

“Well, you see,” he said as he scratched out an even tinier, precise line inside of the tiny, precise circle, “I began to notice a pattern whenever I practiced.”

“Hm?” Her turn now. That spot needed a little squiggle. Yep, just like that. “What was the pattern?”

Another chuckle. This time she could actually hear a small bit of a laugh from the back of his throat. “I kept skipping ahead to the ‘eyes closed’ bit.”

Jester stared up at him, eyebrows raised so high she swore she could feel her hairline. “Wait, even _you_ find this boring?”

“I’d like to think of it more as relaxing, a little meditative...but yes, it can be boring. Everyone fell asleep during those first few weeks of that class. Sometimes even the teacher. ” He took the pencil from her and drew another steady line with barely a glance at the page. 

Huh. All of that practice must have paid off.

“So…” she said as she made another absent squiggle, “Was the teacher at least interesting? You know, sometimes, even if you’re doing something boring, it can be fun if you’re doing it with someone cool.”

“You mean like right now?” he asked with a playful tilt of his head and a quirk of his eyebrow. Then, as though he realized all of a sudden that he wasn’t being _serious_ for more than two seconds, Caleb frowned down at the page and drew a slow loop at the edge of the circle. 

Jester smiled. One day, one day she was going to get him to be silly and have fun and forget that he was a _serious_ person for a whole ten minutes, _without_ him being drunk off his ass.

Nudging her shoulder against his arm she said, “Yeah, just like right now.”

He smiled, though he tried to hide it and press it into a thin line until he smothered it out of existence, but it was there all the same, and so was that blush creeping across his cheeks. Aw, he was embarrassed again, and she wasn’t even trying this time. Score another point for Jester.

He cleared his throat, “Well, that teacher, unfortunately, was not an interesting person. She had the personality of a...uh...a piece of bread that had been left out for too long. Completely dry.”

“Ooh.” Jester winced in sympathy as she reached for her pencil and drew a random curve, not caring where it landed anymore. “That’s pretty bad.”

“Yes, it was. The most interesting thing about her was her accent. There was one word she could never say right.”

“And what was that?”

The corner of his mouth cracked upwards. “Guess.”

“Hmmm…” Jester tapped the pencil against her chin. “‘Salmon.’”

“What? Why would you—”

“Because of the ‘L.’ It’s silent, so it throws people off.”

That corner of his mouth had jumped just a hair higher than it had been. “No, it wasn’t ‘salmon.’ Try again.”

“‘Anemone?’ That’s a tough one too.”

“No, not ‘anemone.’” 

“Oh. ‘Dick-butt?’”

Caleb snorted and shook his head. Oh, he was fighting it now, but it looked like the other corner of his mouth was beginning to dislodge as well.

“Wait, wait, I’ve got it!” Jester leaned in and whispered, “Caleb, is it…The most powerful magic word of all? Is it…’skinky-doodie?’”

And with that, the battle was won. Caleb’s smile broke free along with hers and he laughed, actually, truly laughed. It was a small, rusty kind of sound, but his bright blue eyes were alight with mirth and he stared at her with...with the same kind of look he had when he cast his _Dancing Lights_ , full of joy and wonder.

Once again, Jester had that heady feeling of her toes hanging over the edge of a precipice, and she wondered if it would really be so bad to go freefalling into a clear summer’s sky.

She needed to step back.

“Okay, no really. What was it?” she asked as she caught her breath from her own giggling.

“Oh, um.” He had his hand over his mouth as he tried and failed to force it back into its dour default expression. He finally gave in to the grin and said, “‘Siggle.’”

Jester wrinkled her nose. “‘Siggle?’”

He nodded. “‘Siggle.’”

“What’s a ‘siggle?’”

“According to our teacher, it was...” Caleb tapped the paper spread across their knees, “A sigil.”

“What?!” Jester laughed. “She couldn’t even—oh my god. And that was the _only_ interesting thing about her class?”

“Indeed, up until she began to teach how to create a real…’siggle.’” He blew out one last laugh through his nose again, then sighed. “Those first few weeks, though…”

“That sounds super boring, Caleb.”

“It was, but it was worth it.”

“And why is that?” Jester leaned towards him with her chin on her hand.

Caleb plucked the pencil from her fingers and returned to drawing in her sketchbook. “Because I’m using it now to...to protect people, people I care about. And…” he handed the pencil back to her with a sideways glance, “It’s how I’m going to get a certain ‘leetil bloo teefelling’ back to her mother.”

As always, there was a twinge in her heart at the thought of seeing her mother again, a swift burst of homesickness that she covered up with a sputtered giggle. “That didn't sound anything like me! Caleb, how can you be so bad at accents?”

“Ah, well...let’s just say that Fjord stole all of the good accents, leaving me with only the very, very bad ones.”

“Oooh, of course! That makes total sense,” she said with a smile, then drew a slow arc in her part of the circle. “You know, I can’t wait to see Mama again. It’s only been a few weeks, but so much has happened.”

“Ja, I know,” he said as he took his turn with the pencil, “Don’t worry, I’ll get you back to her. I just need a little bit more time and materials to put everything together. It’s almost ready.”

Jester knocked her shoulder against his. “Thanks, Caleb.”

“You’re welcome.” He nodded, eyes still focused on the page, then handed the graphite stick back to her.

A comfortable silence settled over the two of them as they continued to share the pencil back and forth, each focused on their own sections of the circle. She thought about asking why he was always so determined to get her home, but it didn’t seem right to interrupt the cozy quiet. Sitting there in the stillness, the only sound being the repetitive scratching of pencil against paper, Jester realized in some distant way that she felt...calm, as though lulled into a kind of trance. 

Pass, draw, pass, draw, pass, a sketched a line here, pass, a series of curves there, pass, a dot there, pass, their fingers caught just a bit as they traded off the pencil, another line, pass, their knees pressed close beneath the sketchbook, a branching curl off of that line, pass, elbows knocking together every so often, another intersecting line there, pass, oh, a yawn, and then...

"I think my half is done," she heard him murmur, voice thick. 

"Oh," she said, blinking her eyes. "I think mine is too. I didn't even notice." 

Then she looked down at the lower part of the page.

"Whoa. Caleb, I thought you said you weren't supposed to think about what you were doing." The bottom of the circle was an elegant spider web of lines, shapes, and glyphs. "What spell is that?" 

"Hmmm, it's more like parts of different spells all mushed together. Everything is in a proper place, but altogether they don’t mean anything." He pointed to the top half of the page. “Yours looks pretty good too.”

"Yeah, I guess it does," she said, turning her head this way and that, "If you squint a little, it kinda looks like a tree branch with blooming flowers on it." 

"Hmmm, I think you're right." He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. "Very organic." 

With a giant yawn, Jester stretched her hands to the sky, pulling every muscle tight from her arms to her chest all the way to the tip of her tail. Oh yeah, she felt much more relaxed now. "This was a good idea, Caleb. I'll have to remember it." 

"Glad I could help." He was back to studying the ground again as he rubbed the back of his neck, a faint bit of pink lighting his cheeks, which was…weird. She hadn't even done anything this time. He flicked his eyes back up to her. "You, ah, you think you're ready to go back to sleep?" 

"Al-most," she sang, leaning her head in her hand. "I just have a question first." 

"What's that?" 

She pointed a lazy finger to his half of the page. "What do the symbols mean in your sigil? Your magic is so different than mine." 

He blinked. "Are you sure you want me to answer that _now_? We could pick this back up another day." 

"Mhmm.” She nodded. “I'm going to be wondering about it otherwise, and that might keep me up." 

"Well, all right, but I'm going to keep it quick, okay?" He stifled his own yawn and rubbed an eye with the back of his hand. 

"Yeah, that's fine. I'm just a little curious, and it's hard to sleep when you're curious." 

"Okay then...uh, let me see...let's start here then." He tapped a squiggly looking triangle, eyes becoming both sharp and unfocused at the same time, as though he were able to see something beyond what she could see. "So, um, it's not just the symbol that matters, but the position within the sigil, the shape surrounding it, and, ah, the lines connecting it to the rest of the spell. If you place a glyph, uh, here, it represents a material component, this one being phosphorus…"

A litany of information began to flow from his lips, with Jester humming sounds of general interest every now and then to show she was paying attention. Well, she wasn't _quite_ paying attention, per se, more like listening. Though they had joked about Fjord stealing all of the best accents, Caleb’s natural accent was quite...pleasant. His voice wasn't like other Zemnian accents she had heard from the occasional guest at the Lavish Chateau, often harsh while sounding like they were choking and talking at the same time. No, his way of speaking was far more gentle, with soft slopes between the quiet rise and fall of his pitch. She felt a little bad that she had asked him about his magic just to hear his voice, like she had lied to him, but she could always ask him again for a real explanation later. For now though…

“...So this line shows the shape of the somatic movement and the dot at the end indicates the, uh, the direction—” his voice cut out as she leaned her head against his shoulder, satisfied with the way she could feel his muscles twitch and stiffen under his coat.

“What about this one?” Jester pointed to another symbol on the page, this time some kind of crossed circular thing. “What’s this one do?”

“Oh, um...” He cleared his throat. “That is an alchemical symbol for whether the component should be in solid, liquid, or powdered form. The number of lines…”

And he was off again, just like a human textbook. The longer he talked, the more his arm relaxed, and Jester found herself enjoying the warmth coming through his surprisingly comfy coat as much as the warmth in his voice. His words washed over her, running together and becoming nothing more than soft syllables floating along on a gentle current. She closed her eyes and leaned deeper into his shoulder.

* * *

“Jester? Jester, wake up."

"Nnnnnngh…" she groaned at the whispered voice. 

"Come on now." 

‘No, just five more minutes,’ she would have whined if she weren’t so _tired_. Instead, she simply snuggled deeper into the warmth beneath her cheek.

The voice sighed and silence returned. Jester was on the edge of returning to her dreams when she heard the whispered voice sigh, "You always have to make things difficult. Don’t you, Blaubeere?"

Blaubeere? That was a funny word. It sounded foreign…Zemnian.

Zemnian?

_Oh, that's right._

Jester blinked her bleary lids open to see Caleb looking at her, wearing a barely-there smile so painful and sad it may as well have been a grimace. His free hand was outstretched and hovering an inch away from her shoulder like he was about to nudge her awake. For the briefest bit of a moment, his entire being seemed to stop when her halfway-open eyes met his, as though he had completely removed himself from the flow of time. Then, the smile disappeared, as did his hand, and she felt his shoulder tighten under her cheek.

Jester decided not to mention it. Instead, she rubbed at her eyes and pushed herself off of his shoulder. "Sorry, I must have dozed off," she yawned. "Okay, _now_ I think I'm ready to go to sleep."

"So it would seem." His voice had a thick heaviness to it and she wondered if he had somehow fallen asleep too. In the dim light, she spotted a slight sheen where her face had been. 

"Oh no," she said as she gently wiped at a bit of spittle. "I drooled on your coat." 

"It's fine." He glanced back at her. "It's not the worst thing to have gotten on it, not by a long shot."

"Ewww," she said, "remind me to _never_ ask what that means." 

His lips lifted into a little curve, this time a real one with no sadness hiding behind his eyes. “So noted.”

The two of them climbed to their feet and Jester collected her sketchbook and pencil from Caleb. “Thanks for the talk, and the little magic lesson,” she yawned, “they really helped.”

He nodded. “Of course, and the same to you.”

Perhaps it was because she was confused from being so sleepy or maybe because of muscle memory from saying goodnight to her mother for so many years, that Jester stepped forward, opening her arms to give Caleb a hug. He turned away, heading towards his knapsack in a movement so swift and fluid that she wondered if he had even seen her advance.

“Goodnight, Jester,” he said, still retreating, but something in his voice caught on the edge of her name, forcing it out in a slow whisper. He paused his stride for a moment, raising a hand to his neck, and cleared his throat. He glanced back at her out of the corner of his eye, looking almost guilty. “Allergies. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Caleb,” she said as she watched him return to his bedroll, curling up facing away from her. 

Well, that was...weird. Then again, Caleb was a bit of a weird guy, so she supposed that checked out all right. Stifling another yawn, she walked back to her own knapsack, feeling much more relaxed and at peace as she snuggled back into the bedroll. Sleep came to her almost as soon as she laid down her head, wondering only briefly what would have happened if she had managed to catch Caleb and give him a hug.

* * *

The next morning greeted Jester with the sound of purring as Frumpkin kneaded his paws into her clothes, making the _cutest_ little kitten biscuits _ever_.

“Oh! Hohoho!” she laughed as she skritched Frumpkin behind the ears. What a good boy...good boys deserved treats.

“Don’t tell Caleb, okay?” Jeter reached over to her bag and fished out a pastry, tearing off a piece and holding it out to Frumpkin. She smiled as the fey cat nibbled the food in the palm of her hand. “Yeah...cool.”

She turned towards where Caleb lay in his knapsack, still mostly asleep with his face smushed partway into the fabric.

“Caleb, can I keep Frumpkin forever?” she asked.

“Mmmm, ja...what?” he blinked and rubbed his eyes.

“Yesssss.” She pumped a fist and beamed at him. “Good morning!”

“Good morning,” he answered back as he sat up. He looked down at Frumpkin with not quite a smile, but more an expression of satisfaction.

Jester thought about the night before and how she had reached out for Nugget when she awoke from her nightmare. Maybe Caleb had seen her cry out in her sleep after all, and maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. No, she decided as Frumpkin purred away like mad while she scratched him under the chin, it wasn’t a bad thing at all.


End file.
